Archive for February 2nd, 2010

When those in the US hear the term Black Friday,they would relate it to intensive shopping. When I first read the term my first thought was that, something bad must have happened on that day. But later learnt that it was the Friday following the Thanksgiving holidays in America. It is the day when people do their Christmas shopping because it is the time when they can find the best bargains.

As I had searched the history of this term, I found out that, it happened to be first used in 1869. It was used to call the day when the stock market was a major disaster.  But that doesn’t answer why the term is related to intensive holiday shopping right?

Now, as to why the term ‘black friday’ related to holiday shopping, is because on that day it is the time when the retailers making profit during the holiday season. In the times when people don’t use computers to keep their accounts, obviously they keep their books by hand. They usually use red ink to write down the loss, while they indicate profit with black ink. Hence, came the term, ‘in the red’ for making loss, or ‘in the black’ for making profit.

So Black Friday is the day when the retailers make lots of profit.